The Get Healthy Tampa Bay Podcast

E145: SMART Goals That Stick with Family Physician Dr. Brittany Anderson — Demopolis, Ala.!

• Kerry Reller

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Welcome to the Get Healthy Tampa Bay Podcast with Dr. Kerry Reller! This week, I’m joined by Dr. Brittany Anderson, a family medicine physician in Demopolis, Alabama. In this episode, we break down the SMART framework for goal-setting—how to turn “get healthier” into one clear, measurable action you can actually complete. Dr. Anderson shares practical ways to make goals Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound, plus easy tracking ideas, accountability tips, and non-derailing rewards to build momentum. Tune in for monthly goal strategies you can start today to improve your health with less overwhelm and more wins.

Dr. Brittney Anderson is a board-certified family medicine physician dedicated to the health and well-being of individuals and families in Alabama and beyond. In her private practice, Dr. Anderson provides comprehensive and compassionate care to her patients. Beyond her practice, Dr. Anderson is passionate about medical education. She enjoys teaching and mentoring the next generation of physicians through her involvement with medical students and family medicine residents.

Driven by a commitment to community health, Dr. Anderson is also actively engaged in
educating the general public on important health topics. She believes that knowledge
empowers individuals to make informed decisions about their care. Dr. Anderson's dedication extends beyond the clinic. She contributes her time and expertise by serving on numerous community and statewide service and medical boards, working to improve healthcare access and quality for all.

00:28 – Welcome & guest intro
01:49 – Goals inside annual wellness visits
03:47 – S = Specific (from “get healthy” to one action)
05:46 – M = Measurable (checkboxes, habit apps, tallies)
08:03 – A = Achievable/Realistic wins build momentum
12:37 – R = Relevant (finding your deeper why)
13:05 – T = Time-bound (why monthly beats yearly)
20:10 – Flexibility & seasons: review, adjust, give grace
23:18 – Brittany’s goal: sit-down protein breakfast 5x/week
31:49 – Accountability: share goals; clinic huddles & follow-ups

Connect with Dr. Brittany Anderson
Headed to Healthier podcast:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/headed-to-healthier-expert-health-advice-managing-your
/id1798014956

Connect with Dr. Reller
Podcast website: https://gethealthytbpodcast.buzzsprou... 
My linktree: linktr.ee/kerryrellermd
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerryrellermd/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClearwaterFamilyMedicine
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clearwaterfamilymedicine/
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@kerryrellermd
Clearwater Family Medicine and Allergy website: https://sites.google.com/view/clearwa...
Podcast: https://gethealthytbpodcast.buzzsprou...

Subscribe to the Get Healthy Tampa Bay Podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Amazon music, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Pandora.

Kerry:

Hi everybody. Welcome back to the Get Healthy Tampa Bay podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Kerry Reller, and I wanna welcome to the podcast today, Dr. Brittany Anderson.

Brittney:

Hey, Dr. Reller. I'm so happy to be with you today. Thank you for having me and allowing me to chat with you and your audience today.

Kerry:

Thank you. So why don't you, I always have everybody to do this, but why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

Brittney:

Yeah, absolutely. I'd love to. So again, I'm Brittany Anderson. I'm a family medicine physician, so I practice General Family Medicine in Demopolis, Alabama. So if you're familiar with Alabama at all we are about an hour away from Tuscaloosa, which is where the University of Alabama is. I'm in a rural practice here just in a small community. Love my community, love my town, love my patients, and love getting opportunities like this to be able to chat with folks, whether it's in clinic, at the grocery store, at the ball field, just about being healthier in general. So again, thanks so much for having me today.

Kerry:

Yes, welcome. And so I love what you just said, like getting out and chatting with people in the community. Like that's definitely what, you know, a family physician does. And I, I, you know, the ball field, definitely I run into people there too, and always talking about health and wellness. I love that. So we were gonna talk about kind of goal setting today and hear your expertise on that, and it's a very important thing, right? So tell us how do you begin discussing these kind of things with your patients, clients? Anybody?

Brittney:

So I love talking about goal setting with my patients, and it's one of the things that beginning this new year, we actually started making more of a end of our annual physical exams or annual wellness visits, we'll say something like, at this time next year, tell me one health change that you want to have made, or one health goal that you have. And I realized that I was getting really kind of varied things or that people were telling me the answer that they knew I wanted to hear, or just giving me something really basic and really generic. So in the last couple months, we started actually sitting out in our waiting room a list about developing your health goals. And so it's asking them to pick just one health goal, and then it talks about making that health goal a smart goal. And so that's one of the things I know we'll chat about today. But how you set health goals that are smart goals and not smart in the sense of, you know, smart versus not smart or dumb or anything like that, but smart as an acronym for some things that we should think about when we're setting goals. So I ask my patients to do that. So if they look at it or start filling it out when they're in the waiting room, then they're bringing that into the clinic visit with them. And so I'm able to look at it and I can say something like, Hey, you put on here that your goal was to get healthier, quote unquote, get healthier. Let's break that down into more of a goal that is actionable, that we can go back and track later, and that we can look at and say, I did this thing. Let me mark that off because I did what I planned to do. And so that's become really important. And I'll have patients, again. I'm in a small community. I can be at Walmart after clinic. I can be coaching a softball team on the field and a patient will say, Hey, Dr. Anderson, I met my goal. If their goal was, You know, 10,000 steps a day, and so them hitting that goal because they have then set it in front of them, it's a smart goal. It's something that they can look back and say, I did this thing. And so it's been really fun and something that now we really incorporate into our practice and we can see what a change it's making in our patients' overall health.

Kerry:

Yeah, I think that's like really awesome. What I wanna say is that some, I think we might have lost you in like a couple times. I don't know if it's me or you.

Brittney:

It all over again. I'm gonna change

Kerry:

I think we got it. But I think at the, at the beginning I just wanted to recap. You had said you were noticing like when people, patients would come in for their annual wellness visit, this is something that you started doing right. So may they may some say something generic at the beginning and then, you know, now you've kind of have this established practice where you're asking patients. Like say, Hey, what is your goal? And then during the visit you can kind of clarify and define it a little bit more in detail. And I think that is an excellent thing. Everybody should be working towards something you know, while they're not seeing you. So how do you go about, I guess, planning and figuring out this, and basically what is a smart goal?

Brittney:

Yeah, so smart goals are, are again, things I love to talk about in my patients and we set, you know, a framework for it. And that framework is not anything that I developed. I should probably know who did develop it and I don't know. But when we think about setting smart goals, we think about S-M-A-R-T. And so When we're talking about the S tell them that your goal should be specific, and that is where a lot of us kind of struggle at first, right? That we make goals that are really broad or really generic. Or we'll say things like I said before, I want to be healthier. And you ask that next question, tell me what that means. To you. So instead of saying, I wanna be healthier, instead say something like, I wanna have, you know, three sortings of vegetables each day. Something that is more specific than just really broad terms. And what I tell my patients is to break that down for me. Don't just say the thing that you know, I want to hear you say. But tell me what really your true goal is. So making sure that it's specific, so them defining exactly what they want to achieve. So that's the S.

Kerry:

So they're setting out so specific goals, something that's easier to track. So the next step would be M so what is M stand for

Brittney:

And so the M is that the goals should be measurable, right? So I don't know about you, but I love a good checkbox. I love a good spreadsheet. And so I tell my patients always that when you're setting goals, you want to either be able to check off and say, I did this thing, or I didn't quite hit it. And the way we do that is make sure that the goals that we set are measurable. So you can say things instead of, I wanna be healthier. Again, define that. Make it specific. Instead of saying, I wanna get more exercise, maybe to make it measurable, you say, I wanna walk for 30 minutes a day, five days a week. That is one of those things that you can check the box. Either you did it. Or you didn't do it. Some people may have a goal that is set around weight or weight loss, and so making sure again, that you're setting a measurable goal there. I want to lose X number of pounds. Then it's either you did it or you did it. So again, I think it's important not only that our goals be specific, which is the S, but the M is that they should be measurable. Then the A in the SMART goals is that the goal should be achievable. And I joke with my patients and say, maybe this should actually be an R and it should be realistic, but there's a whole separate R that we'll talk about. But I think that the goal should be achievable. So again, going along that line of maybe a plan for more walking, make sure that if you say, well, you know, Dr. Anderson, I wanna start walking 30 minutes, five days a week, if that is something that's in your wheelhouse then wonderful. But maybe it's not in your wheelhouse to say, I wanna walk, you know, 10 miles a day. Is that something that really is achievable, maybe down the road? It is. But we wanna start off with goals that are realistic. So think of that a yes, it stands for achievable, but in our head we want to make that both achievable and realistic. So starting off with something that you can do, because what we realized, Dr. Reller, is that when we set goals that we can achieve, then we feel good. We get that extra, you know, little bit of oomph that comes with it, and it makes you set that next goal. And again, it goes back to my love of checking things off. So we set a goal that's achievable that we can hit, and then the next goal we set should build on that and should allow us to continue striving to be healthier if that's our overall goal.

Kerry:

I love your idea of data and checklists, so I think it, like you said, measurable things are really important, and even when you said it should be achievable and realistic, that you can get that I. What we sometimes say is like a dopamine

Brittney:

Yeah.

Kerry:

you know, getting a reward, right, for achieving your goals. Well, if you're measuring your data, even just inputting like into a tracker or something like that, then you can kind of feel rewarding from that experience too. So I do, and I, in the past, and even for my kids, we use like this Habit Tracker app. And you can put in whatever habit you're trying to break or a habit, whatever habit you're trying to add, and you can like check off that you did it. So for instance, we make sure our kids read 20 minutes at night. We say how much they read and you know, they're not seeing that, but I'm checking it off for them and I think it feels, you know, pretty good inside to have done that. And we'll do it for like math or piano or something like that too. And then sometimes we I have them for myself too of course.

Brittney:

I love that. I think that's wonderful. Especially along the lines of reading and, and that's just the thing, you know, we talk about setting goals that are related to health, but you can use these smart goals for literally everything. Everything that I do, whether it's related to work, if it's related to exercise, eating habits, all those. Things I try to make sure. Alright Brittany, is this really like, have I made it as specific as I can? Is it something that I can go back and measure and check off my list? And is it actually something that is achievable? So I think that's great. I love the idea of the habit trackers. That's great.

Kerry:

It's a good app if you need to suggest it for people who like their data like monitoring and things like that. It's

Brittney:

I'm gonna start.

Kerry:

Along with the, the tracking thing, you know, when we were talking about weight loss, you know that people who usually track their food and things like that have a lot more success. Those people who track their weight have a lot more success, the National Weight Control Registry showed that patients who weighed at least weekly had more success of keeping their weight off, and I think they had to lose at least 20 pounds and keep it off for x number of time. The other thing was some like tracking your food too, is people have a lot more success, and I noticed that even within my own patients, the patients who are truly dedicated and tracking their things do really well with that too.

Brittney:

It just keeps it top of mind. Right? And again, when you're saying those goals and it's not just enough, you know, to write the goal down or to the beginning of the month, decide that goal. But I tell people, write it down. Put it on your refrigerator, put it on your bathroom mirror. Say it every morning when you. Wake up because you're just, again, reinforcing that plan. And so I love the idea, like you said, of getting those things down in front of you and following it regularly. It's great.

Kerry:

Yeah, so we got through the SMA, what is next with the r?

Brittney:

So we got through the SMA, the r is relevant, right? And relevancy, I, I tell my patients and I think about for myself, it's just that making it matter, right? And so really digging into the why this is important. So making sure that it's actually relevant to something you want. So if we were to use the example of, you know, of walking 30 minutes a day for five days a week, then that question, the question I'm asking of my patients, the. Question I'm asking myself is, why is this important? Why is this relevant to me? And even if I get an answer of a why, I say, but why is that important? So sometimes patients will say, you know, well, I wanna start walking more. I wanna walk 30 minutes a day, five days a week, because I wanna lose 10 pounds. Then I say, well, why do you wanna lose 10 pounds? And it may be because I have a dress in my closet that I've been waiting away for two years that I haven't been able to get to. That's when I get it right. And so I keep digging for that why? Until I can help my patients paint a picture or even help myself paint a picture of why this is relevant to me. Because I think when you identify that reason of why it's relevant, then that really helps you to hold to it. So even for you, you mentioned your kids tracking their reading, you know, at night. Why is that important? Not just to check it off and say that they did it, but it's to build their literacy, right, we know that kids who, you know, read for extended periods of time and who are doing it regularly and frequently, they're gonna be better prepared for school and for things that come down the road. And so always digging back to that, why am I doing this? Why is this really relevant to me? So that's the r Again, it should be realistic in my head. Because the realistic, we'll give to the A for achievable instead, but I think that the R for relevancy is really important, and that's just making sure that the goal ties into something that's really meaningful for your life.

Kerry:

Yeah, you definitely need to connect it. That's something's important, right? And I don't know if the kids necessarily connected to what's important,

Brittney:

you.

Kerry:

a little bit harder, but hopefully they, they will and do. But I think we're having that struggle a little bit with why do I need to do my homework kind of stuff.

Brittney:

It will pay off dividends. You tell it'll pay dividends down the road. So that's.

Kerry:

yeah, yeah. But anyway, so we've got, we got almost all the letters, so what's that with T

Brittney:

Let's do it. That's right. So the S was four specific. The M for measurable, the A, that goal should be achievable. The R, it should be relevant and the T is that it should be time bound. And so we sometimes make these goals that are, you know, by this time next year, this is what I want. And I was guilty of that when I started with my patients. And like I said before, it was before your annual exam next year, what do you wanna have changed? Lately we've changed it into a this month. So what they're looking at in the waiting room is in September, this is what I wanna accomplish. And so I think what we realized from those smart goals is that they should be time bound. That you should say, I'm gonna do this by X date, and X date really shouldn't be a year away. Maybe it shouldn't be more than three months away, right? Because we find that when we put a goal off for a long period of time. Then there's no urgency within us. Then we say, alright, if my goal is to lose, you know, 10 pounds this year, well there's almost nothing that's gonna make me work for that until I get almost to the end of the year and I want to check off that I did it. So make it not just time bound by giving it an end time, but make sure that that time is a reasonable amount of time. So even if that means that you have to set a smaller goal. That's okay. But give yourself a goal that has an end date. And so making it time bound is important. And so, like we said, with, without wanting to walk earlier, so I'm gonna walk 30 minutes a day, five days a week. I'm gonna do this every week, five days a week for the next four weeks. And then you do it, you check it off, and then you increase that goal for the next month, that comes ahead. So the tee in, in the smart goals is making sure that they're time bound. And I think that's really important.

Kerry:

Yeah, so I was thinking before we, did this, discussion on goals. It was like, oh man, did I not do any goals this year? And because I used to always do that. And then I realized, you know, every year I set to kind of run a certain amount of miles, right? And the next year would be to beat. Right. And to do that, like you said, you can't wait till the end of the year. Right. So I have to calculate how many do I have to meet each week, you know, to do that. And like you said, breaking it down is very important so that you can, you know, get like bite size amounts that can equal the overall goal. Right. And I'm sure you have a lot of good things to say about how to break down these goals as well, like

Brittney:

Yeah, I, I love that idea of breaking down those big goals into smaller parts. And so there's nothing to say that you shouldn't have a yearly goal. Right. And I do, I wake up every morning. I started this in apparently May of 2025.'cause every morning I wake up, I say. By May of 2026, I'm gonna have done and I read off work, recite those 10 things in my head, but I'm not waiting until April of 2026 to start those things. In May, I took those 10 things that I wanna get done by May of 2026 and said, alright, these are the steps to me reaching that and let me break that 12 months down into quarters and this is what I need to do each quarter, but in order to reach those quarterly goals. Let me break that down to what I need to do each month. And because I'm me, I break down each month into weeks and then I break it into each day because for me, that really works and that helps me to, to know that when I get up again, I love my check boxes that I can say, I did this thing to today so that I can meet that goal that I set for May of 2026. So even though. The, the big goal is far off. I'm setting kind of smaller incremental goals between there, and it's very similar to what you said to your running, right? So your big goal is to do more than you've done in a year past, but you don't wanna get to the end of the year, and then you've gotta run a ton. To make up for, for that amount that you need, but instead breaking it down to smaller sections. And that can be done with anything. It can be done with, you know, weight control. It can be done with blood pressure management, it can be done with A1C improvements. So all of these things that you and I see in our really busy practices all the time. All of those big goals that we have for our patients and that we share with our patients, those can be broken down into smaller goals, and I think that's important for us to share with our patients, for our colleagues, our friends, all across the board.

Kerry:

I think you also said something very important. You said you are reading your goals every morning, right? So another thing I would suggest, and you probably would agree with is that you need to review your goals, right? And looking at them every day. Also keeps them up, you know, front of your mind as

Brittney:

Yeah, absolutely. And whether that's looking at'em on the sheet of paper, we're here now at the time of us recording this. It's September. Like I don't even have to look at that paper anymore because I say this every morning and I usually say it going from between my bed to getting into my bathroom. And I'll say all of them before I even get there because they. They have become a part of my routine, and it's something about saying those things out loud or reading them aloud. I have some friends who write them down every single morning when they get up, but it again, it's just keeping it top of mind and it makes it not this crazy, scary thing. It becomes normal because you're saying it every day that, oh, it's not crazy or abnormal to say that I want to do X, Y, Z, because I've heard somebody say that every day, oh wait, that someone is me. Every day I've been saying out loud that this is what I'm gonna do. And so I really love that idea of recite your goals. My niece is 16. I make her do the same thing, and she has some wild things that she says as a 16-year-old, but she knows what she wants and she's getting up saying those things over and over again. So these things no longer are kind of these out of the box things, but there are things that instead become a little bit more realistic because she keeps hearing herself say it over and over again. So I think it's funny, again, 16-year-old girls, there are all kinds of things that, that they want and that they can set at goals. But we go back and say, all right, this is something that's really achievable. Have you been, you know, is this time bound? Where are we setting with it? But I mean, she wants to take a big trip. She's gonna take that trip, I'm sure, because that trip is gonna depend on me being the one to, to pay for it. And she's doing those little things that she needs to do to make sure that she has that trip planned, come her birthday next year. But she has, she's taken this big goal and she's broken it down into smaller goals and so it's, you know, auntie Brittney, I, I got this on my report card. You know, it sure would be nice to be able to go, you know, on this trip that I want. So she's working it slowly and and incrementally to get what she wants. And so just really saying those goals, putting those goals out there, I think is important.

Kerry:

That's awesome. I'm so glad that you've got her doing it too. That's awesome.

Brittney:

I wanted her to do it for her schoolwork, and she's turned it into her own personal game at this point.

Kerry:

Yeah. Yeah. She'll learn how to use it in other sources of life, I'm sure. So what do we do when or how do you adjust your goals when there's some life changes? Or how do you get, be a little bit more flexible if need to.

Brittney:

I, I love that. And it goes back to the point earlier that you were making about reviewing the goals, right? So we all go through seasons of life and sometimes we go through seasons that just knock us down a little bit and keep us from being able to hit those goals that we set before us. And that's okay. It's okay if we hit, if we don't hit them. It's okay if something comes in the middle. Of us reaching them if we were on track to reach them, but had some kind of big life event that happened, that's okay. That same goal is there and it'll be there the next go round. And so it's not to completely get down on ourselves when we don't hit those goals. But remember, if it was a smart goal to begin with, if you were specific about it, if it was something that was measureable and something that was achievable and relevant and time bound, it's still a good goal. Do it next time. And one of the things that we realized too is that, you know, what's that cliche if you, you know, shoot for the stars and hit the moon or shoot for the moon and hit the stars, right? That it is just a matter of setting the goal to start with that, even if we don't quite hit that goal for myself, I know if I set a big goal and don't meet that goal. I probably still got a lot closer to it and got a lot further along than I would've gotten if I had not set any goal at all. So just, you know, giving yourself some grace and knowing that things happen, but if it was a good goal to start with, time goes on, right? We set that goal again for the next go round.

Kerry:

I mean, I would totally agree. Just going back to my example of like running or exercise or something. So I didn't, you know, hit it. I think definitely not last year. I'm wondering if I didn't hit it the year before, but I also had kind of tweaked it, right? Because I was, it was running for a certain number of miles, but I also do other exercises, right? So I had said, well, I wanna work out five or six days a week, and I only run twice a week. So, you know, I'm not gonna meet the running goal, but at least I got these other things involved and it's probably healthier overall because I am, you know, adding those other things in and realizing, okay, well I didn't get the extra workout in this week because, we had to do something out of town with our kids, or something fun like that. And, you know, those are okay to trade off, but like, like you said, you get back on and my goal is still there. Yeah.

Brittney:

Exactly. Yep. I love that. And you are a baller if you are exercising and running that much. My goal is to be more like you that I need to.

Kerry:

Those are just my things. Those are my things. Yeah. But you, like, you, we, like I was mentioning with the Habit app though, you can also have a goal to remove unhealthy things from your life. So maybe you're taking out a cigarette a week or something like that, right? Yeah.

Brittney:

Great. Yeah. And that may be something I look back the taking away of, of things that are, are detrimental to our body and to our health. So maybe once I've got my patients used to the adding goals, maybe I'll do that for two years and then we'll start talking about taking things away. I love that. I have got to check out that app, so thanks for letting me know about it.

Kerry:

Yeah, so I mean, it, it's important, right? Because obviously, you know, you, you said things and add positive things, but you can also remove the negative. So yeah, those can be part of the goal sharing process as well, so you can think about that. Yeah. do you mind sharing with us one of your personal health goals or maybe family members if you don't wanna share your own?

Brittney:

Yeah, no, absolutely. I'll share mine and mine really is to eat breakfast every morning. And I know that that sounds crazy and maybe it's, it's something that I should be able to do anyways, but I wake up and am just at like a bottle rocket from the time I get up until I get outta the house, right? And so I've started working really hard on planning ahead for breakfast and making, you know, not just eat breakfast, I'll put something in my mouth, but making it a meaningful breakfast, right? And a breakfast that I'm not eating while I'm, you know, editing a podcast or not eating while I'm doing patient notes, but it is to, to have breakfast at good protein filled breakfast down in front of me. And doing that regularly. And I'm giving myself a little bit of grace and I'm saying five days of the week, right? And so that's Monday through Friday. I usually, I sleep a little bit later. I'll go out to eat or something on the weekends, but five days a week in the morning, I'm sitting down to a balanced breakfast in the morning. And for me that encompasses a lot of things, right? It makes me slow down for one, and while I'm sitting there, I'm not watching tv. I'm thinking through the day, I'm starting to plan for the day, and I realize that when I do that, yes, my goal is to, you know, get breakfast in and to, you know, have that that time. But it also sets me up for the rest of the day, and that's major for me. There are so many things that I have in the past and could easily just throw in my mouth on the way out of, of, of my house in the morning. But it's so much better for me to sit down. So that is one of the current goals that I'm working on, and I do count that as a, as a health goal. It keeps me from taking in too much sugar in the morning. It keeps me from being super stressed in the morning when I get to work because I've given myself that time through the day. Now it does take a little bit more planning, and I'm working on that too, to make sure I have groceries in the house that can give me a balanced meal on my plate in the morning. But that's one of the goals that I'm, I'm pretty proud of myself for, for having hit. And so it is to have a balanced breakfast five days a week and to do it consistently for three months. And so it's all those things. It's specific. I'm as specific as I can be with it. It's measurable. Either I do it or I don't. It's achievable because if I wake up in enough time and I, I can use my stove and my refrigerator, there's nothing to say that I can't put the food on the plate. It's relevant because it, again, it changes the trajectory of my day altogether, and what I want is a smoother day. Lose a little bit of weight, all those things. So it makes sense to me and it is time bound. I'm doing it for three months and at the end of three months, then maybe that goal is also that I sit down at dinner time and I have a full balanced dinner in front of me and I'm not doing a million things at once. So it's time bound there and it's one that I know that I can build on later. So that's my current, one of the goals that I'm, I'm most proud of here lately.

Kerry:

That's definitely a good goal. I don't probably do that myself. It's hard and it, and I do tell patients you need to, you know, not have the distraction. Don't eat in front of the tv, don't eat scrolling social media because you could eat more than you really intend to, you know, so it's a great goal.

Brittney:

Yep. I'm working on it. I'm working on it. And one of the things I didn't mention was the rewarding yourself at the end of it. Right. And so sorry that I left that out. But that's one of the things that I tell my patients to do. It's one of the things that, you know, I work on for myself. I teach my niece to do it with her, you know, goals that are set for grades and it's all right. What is the reward when you get the report card that we want. And so same thing. So setting that reward for yourself. My reward for, for getting up eating breakfast, a balanced breakfast the schedule is a massage. I don't treat myself to massages very much, very often. So at the end of these three months, if I do what I'm supposed to do, I'm going to get a two hour massage and I'm happy about it. But there's some people, and I'm one of them, I need something to work towards. Right. And on those days when it's easier for me to. Stay in bed for another 15, 20 minutes and I think, gosh, that massage would feel good. Let me get up and, you know, make some eggs and get some, you know, strawberries on that plate and some yogurt. Because I want that massage. And so for me it's encouraging and pushes me along.

Kerry:

Yeah, I was gonna ask you like, how do you celebrate your goals and stuff, so that's perfect. Yeah. You definitely need to reward yourself for reaching the goal or maybe, you know, almost reaching. The goal, whatever it may be.

Brittney:

And that's the thing, right? And, and even, you know, it's one thing for reaching the goal, but it's still that remembering that, gosh, you know, the goals that we set, even if I got to the end of three months and only 70% of the time had I done what I was supposed to do I still did a lot better than I was doing six months ago. Right. And so even if it's not physical reward that you give yourself for that, it's still a good pat on the back. Right. And realizing that you did a lot more than you were doing this time, you know, X number of months ago. I think that's important.

Kerry:

Yeah, definitely. Do you have any like other like fun rituals or habits that keep you motivated or

Brittney:

yeah.

Kerry:

breakfast one?

Brittney:

Yeah. Yeah. So my morning repeating, reciting the 10 goals is, is a big one for me. I'm getting in the habit. I feel like I talked about my niece a lot today, but we have also got in the habit of at the end of the day reciting our wins for the day and planning our wins for tomorrow. Right. And so I was reading the Gap in The Gain, which is a wonderful book. I read it recently and it was one of the. Things that they mentioned doing in it. So just saying out loud your wins for the day, and then going ahead and planning ahead what those wins for tomorrow will be. And so it really keeps you in the moment. It really keeps you from thinking, oh, nothing good happened to me today, but my wins for today are I had a really good breakfast today. I got all my morning patients done before 12 o'clock. You know, I got all my morning notes done and my wins for tomorrow are gonna be that, you know, I'm gonna get all my laundry done. And so it's kind of forecasting, right? So planning those things ahead. But that is another kind of thing that I started to adopt lately that really helps. And all those things, of course, can be tied into your goals. So I could easily say my wins for today were. You know, that I didn't burn my house down trying to boil eggs that, you know, my avocado was ripe this morning. I mean, and so it can be that we name those wins that are related to our goals too. And, and that's, I think is, is important, but it's made such a big difference. Just that. And I think setting goals in general, even my staff now, in the mornings before we see patients, we huddle. So we review all of our patients for the day, and then we go around the room and we talk about our work goal for the day, and I tell them that it's not just have a good day. It needs to be a smart goal. So we go through our work goal for the day and we name a home goal for the day. In doing that, it keeps us accountable to each other as well to make sure that we're doing those things that we've set out loud to everyone else in the room that we wanna do both at work and at home.

Kerry:

I love that. I mean, those are great, like team building things that you're doing too. I would say I do the wins and sometimes my wins are like what you said, like you didn't burn the house down. Mine would be like, I didn't cry when dot dot happened today.

Brittney:

Say them out loud, count'em as wins. Those count.

Kerry:

Yeah.

Brittney:

Absolutely.

Kerry:

Yeah. Well, let's see. Do you have anything else about goal setting you wanna share for our listeners?

Brittney:

The only thing else that I'll add it would be just what I was starting to say about my staff here. So when we set our goals, you know, it helps us to hold each other accountable to them, right? And so even me telling you aloud my goal about eating breakfast, I now feel like I'm accountable to you for that. That if I run into you in Tampa Bay, somewhere you are well, okay to say, Hey Anderson, did you eat a full breakfast this morning? And you sit down in front of your TV and and eat it or not? But I love that piece of having accountability and so making sure that you share that goal with someone else. So when I'm talking to my patients about it, then I'll include it in their chart for the day. I'm putting their, you know, I've got a, a space that says goal. I put what it is, I put what we talked about with it. So next time I see them, I'm asking them about it again. And they've gotten to the point now that they know I'm gonna ask them about it again. And so it really does hold them. Accountable to me to do those things that we talked about. And I think that accountability piece is really important. And so I encourage folks, as you're setting a goal, tell somebody that you love, that you trust about that goal, and ask them to hold you accountable to it. And if you need that trade off, then tell them to set their own goal and you can hold them accountable to it. So it's not just you feeling like they are making you do something or not. But I love that accountability piece as well.

Kerry:

Yeah. I'm so glad you mentioned that, because that makes it a lot more real and that you're probably gonna have more success sticking to it and you know, working toward it at least. So I think that's, that's a really good, important point as well. Yeah. Awesome. Well, where can people find you if they wanna follow you, work with you? I know you have a podcast too,

Brittney:

Yeah, thanks for having me to talk about it. So it's called Headed to Healthier and it's for anyone obviously its a podcast. Anybody can listen to them. But specifically my audience is, is me thinking about women who are late thirties in their forties, fifties, sixties, who lead really busy lives, lead really busy lives, but have the health related questions that maybe they are too embarrassed to ask their doctor, or they forget to ask their doctor or they, you know, had made a doctor's appointment in a while, and so we spend time talking about things that are really relevant to women's health. Now, of course, just as I know you do with this podcast, I say, I'm not your physician. I'm not giving specific medical advice, but it's just through giving some health, education, health tips to things that are relevant to, to people, women in particular who lead really busy lives. Spent so much of their lives putting everyone else, their kids, their parents, their family, work, school, everything else kind of in front of themselves. And so it's our time to all get healthier together. And so we share little tips very similar to the ones we've talked about today.

Kerry:

Love it. Yes. Everybody should listen. I mean, you're doing amazing things and they do definitely need to be following you and watching your lead. So thank you for your time today and for coming on the podcast. I really you know, enjoyed our conversation. I think everyone listening is really going to go out and set their smart goals. I hope, and I think, I think you made a good lesson for me too. I probably don't do it enough at just the annual well visit, so they think it's a great time to establish that. We definitely do it at weight management visits a little bit, but maybe we need to step it up for you know, not just weight related things. Right.

Brittney:

Well, and patients appreciate it. So I think and or, or receptive to it, I should say. And, and if I don't ask'em about a piece of paper that they filled out in the waiting room, they ask me about it. And so

Kerry:

Good.

Brittney:

I think it's a wonderful thing to incorporate into practices.

Kerry:

Good. Well, where else can they find you? What's your social's, website, stuff like that?

Brittney:

So, yeah, so the website is headed to healthier.com and it really just kind of links back to the podcast and to the social media. I've got an Instagram that I'm working to get, maybe that should be the goal I set right to get more active on Instagram. But I've got an Instagram and it's headed underscore to underscore healthier. And so I'm really working on that. And if you don't mind me saying, I am working on a planner, so creating a planner. That I'm so excited about'cause it's all about setting health goals, right? And so each month it gives folks a chance to plan their health goal for the month, who they're gonna hold accountable or who's gonna help hold them accountable, how they're gonna celebrate it. But it also has a space for them to just do their regular daily planning. But at the beginning, it's a wonderful place for them to track their health information. And so it has a place for them to put the medicines that they're taking, who their doctors are, you know who they're seeing for their general health, who their, you know, ob gyn is who their therapist is, who their dentist is, and to have that information there and a place to track their health visit so they can say, you know, I know you get it. I do. When patients come in and they're like, oh, I saw my neurologist. And it's like, well, when did you see them? I don't have a note of them. What did they say? So it's got just a nice little place where they can jot down kind of the summary of those visits and a place for them to plan their visits as well. So I'm going to see, you know, Dr. Reller today, here are the two questions I wanna make sure I ask her. Here's what my blood pressure was, that kind of thing. And so I'm excited about that as a way, and, and there, as we get closer to the end of the year, it's a yearly journal. We'll come out cleaner, we'll come out next year. But the information will be on the website for those too.

Kerry:

That is, that is a such a great resource and a great idea. I absolutely love it. I've actually been, we have to sign my kids' planners every night and I'm like, I want one of these, like, there's this like great little quotes to help keep you motivated. They can track their reading time. It's great. Yeah.

Brittney:

and I'm sure your kids love it too. Again, I love check boxes, so I love to be able to say, I did these things through the day and so I love that your kids have planners. That's so cute.

Kerry:

Yeah. That's great. I love it. All right, well so we put, we'll put all that information in the show notes. Definitely. And I think we'll have to say, you know, look out for the planner'cause it's coming. Right. Yeah. And then I mean, thank you. Just thank you so much for coming on today and sharing everything with us. We thoroughly enjoyed it. And everybody tune in next week for next week's episode. And if you need anyone in the Clearwater Tampa Bay area, you let us know at 7 2 7 4 4 6 10 97. And if you're in outside Tuscaloosa, Alabama, you can look for Dr. Anderson.

Brittney:

Great. Dr. Reller, thank you so much. It's such a pleasure to know you and I love what you're doing for your Clearwater Tampa Bay area that we don't have anything similar to that around here. So I love that you are giving, you know, health information that's really specific to the population of patients that's there. So thank you so much for having me today. I appreciate it.

Kerry:

Yeah. Thank you for coming. All right.

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Dr. Kerry Reller

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